As war loomed with Iraq, students protested at colleges and universities around the country. On the Brooklyn Campus, dozens of students joined the “Books Not Bombs” national strike on March 5, eschewing classes for actions and discussions.

“There are 300 organizations at schools around the United States, at Columbia, CUNY and New York University as well as here” taking part in the student strike, said Monique Scott, president of the Student Government Association, which helped organize the actions. She dubbed the day’s marches around campus, debates and films “successful.”

A lively roundtable with Political Science Department faculty in the Luntey Commons included discussions that ranged from questions about international law and strategy to views about the role of college campuses in stopping the Vietnam War. Jose Sanchez, political science professor and head of the urban studies department, raised a provocative point, urging students to relate foreign policy debate to their own experiences.

“It is important that students who are members of minority groups, as many of our students are, see that their experiences give them a capability to debate with other Americans and help them understand why people outside this country hate us so much,” Sanchez said.

Nearly a month earlier, concern about actions in Iraq drew about 70 members of the Campus community to a Faculty Forum that asked, “Can U.N. Inspectors Prevent War In Iraq?” The panel at the February 11 forum included Arang Keshavarzian, a Middle East expert in the Political Science Department, James Sutterlin of the Campus’ U.N. Graduate Certificate program and Yale University’s U.N. studies program, and Jane Krasno, also of Yale. Sutterlin and Krasno are co-authors of the newly published, “The United Nations and Iraq: Defanging the Viper.”